Research On The Evolution Mechanism Of The Industrial Cluster Based On The Partnerships

Since 1980, global competition becomes increasingly fierce and technological innovation varies daily. Meantime, the need of customer is becoming more and more customized, and the uncertainty of need also becomes increasingly. In the context, many firms try to build the formal and informal relation of cooperation with related firms and organizations to achieve the rapid growth. The establishment of partnership has become the important instrument in the growth of firm and the regional development. Industrial cluster creates the distinctive conditions for building the cooperative relation between firms. Based on the assumption that actors in industrial cluster are heterogeneous and are not interchangeable, this research explores the trust mechanism that is the basic and operating mechanism of partnership in traditional industrial cluster, knowledge transfer, knowledge diffusion, the evolution and sustainable development of industrial cluster.With studying the mechanism of trust in industrial cluster, the finding is that the mechanism of trust is evolving from trust based on family to trust based to general family to institutional trust. According to the constitutive mechanism of trust between partners, we bring forward three constitutive paths of trust including the construction of trust based on "binding transaction", trust based on high exit block and trust based on inter-linkage transaction. Since trust is a social mechanism that is embedded in social structure and institutions, trust mechanism is studied by the perseptive of institutions. The finding is that the change of institutions is considered as the result of power relation between actors. The distribution of benefits and the asymmetry between actors is the important factor of explaining the change of institutions, and it believes that the partnership of traditional indutrail cluster is changing from the equal relations to inequal relations.With the knowledge transfer of industrial cluster, the thesis believes that traditional industrial cluster has fourth mechanisms of knowledge transfer: product imitatation, human resource mobile, inter-firm relation and spin-offs. The linkages between outside-knowledge and in-knowledge are achieved through the "technological gatekeeper". Technological gatekeeper absorbs outside-knowledge into industrial cluster and facilitates the diffusion between the firms. Meanwhile, it is also found that the rate of knowledge transfer is positively related with the extent of knowledge codification and negatively related with the number of channels of knowledge transfer. Localized knowledge does not freely flow in the cluster, nor evenly diffuse in the industrial cluster. Instead, knowledge is flowed in the clique based on the same knowledge.The study analyzes the evolution of industrial cluster from three different perspectives. From the focal firm, the strategy of focal firm tends to deviate from the behaviour of traditional industrial cluster, and meantime change the operatng mode of industrial cluster. Furthermore, industrial cluster based on focal firm tends to moderate. From the partnership, network includes three elements: dyadal relation change and network change, incremental change and radical change, and from one circle to another circle. By introducing the crucial event, this section argues that radical event results from crucial event. Finally, from the structure of network, It argues that the evolution of firm network is divided into four stages: scattered fragment, single hub-and-spoke, multi-hub small-world network and core/periphery. Starting with a disconnected community, network builders can start weaving together the necessary skills and resources to build simple single hub networks. This will be followed by a more robust multi-hub network, concluding with a resilient core/periphery structure - maximized for learning and implementation.Network weaver plays the important role from the low-level stage of network to high-level stage of network.Based on global-local relation, strong-weak relation and direct-indirect relation, the thesis brings forward the model of sustainable development of focal firm and industrial cluster from relational balance. Futher, it gives some suggestions on the focal of policy in promoting the regional development.